**Boston, MA (March 28, 2006)** – Landing a decisive blow in a three-year battle involving scores of union legal maneuvers, an administrative law judge yesterday certified an election long held in limbo in which Saint-Gobain Abrasives employees voted to remove the United Auto Workers (UAW) union. The judge found UAW union officials’ last-ditch attempts to circumvent worker free choice at the massive Worcester manufacturing facility to be unavailing. The employees received free legal assistance from the National Right to Work Foundation.

After a determined group of workers filed to decertify the UAW, union lawyers exploited National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) procedures to block a vote for two years. Ultimately, believing they had the votes to win, the union waived their “blocking” charges and allowed the vote to proceed in January 2005. But Saint-Gobain employees voted by a margin of 350 to 309 to terminate the union’s status as the monopoly bargaining representative at the plant. Shortly after the election results rolled in, UAW union officials filed a series of desperate objections to the results, specifically targeting the Foundation and a group of dissenting Saint-Gobain workers.

In their initial response filed at the NLRB regional office, Foundation attorneys pointed out that union officials provided no evidence supporting their objections concerning the Foundation and dissenting workers as law requires, making those claims too “vague and incomprehensible” to answer. In his decision, released yesterday, the judge agreed that no evidence supported those claims, and ruled that union officials should not be permitted to obtain a rerun simply because they do not like the outcome.

“This ruling should put an end to the union officials’ shameless attempts to cling to power,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “While we are pleased that the employees’ wishes are finally being respected, this lengthy legal battle vividly demonstrates how the NLRB’s bureaucratic procedures are stacked against employee free choice.”

A decertification election has only one purpose and effect: to remove a union as the exclusive bargaining representative of employees. Under the National Labor Relations Act, if 30 percent or more of the employees in a bargaining unit sign a decertification petition, the NLRB should conduct a secret ballot election to determine if a majority of the employees wish to throw the union out.

With the insufficient objections dismissed and the decertification vote official, Saint-Gobain employees will be free to negotiate their own terms and conditions of employment and be rewarded on their individual merit. Under the law, UAW union officials would have to wait at least one year before embarking on any new attempt to corral Saint-Gobain workers into union ranks.

The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation is a nonprofit, charitable organization providing free legal aid to employees whose human or civil rights have been violated by compulsory unionism abuses. The Foundation, which can be contacted toll-free at 1-800-336-3600, assists thousands of employees in more than 250 cases nationwide per year.